By Lynne Dokurno
My mom’s passion in life, besides her family, has always been quilting. When I was young, my mom began her life with a needle and thread as a seamstress. Now I appreciate what it takes to make clothes but at the time, as the youngest of 4 children, I was embarrassed by always wearing hand me downs or homemade clothes! It did come in handy when I took home economics in Grade 7 and had to make an outfit. I made a great pair of denim overalls with a matching hat. Adding a special touch, my mom used her new computerized sewing machine to embroider my name on the brim. Needless to say, I got a great mark, but some of my classmates were a bit upset, thinking I had an unfair advantage.
While I was still in grade school, my mom started her quilting career. Every year, after the Christmas season of visiting was over, the full-size quilt frame would be set up in our living room for yet another quilt to be hand stitched. To me, this was normal. For months us kids would set up forts underneath it when my mom wasn’t quilting, and we all knew not to knock it or spill anything. And that was only the beginning.
My mom founded many quilting guilds and taught quilting for decades. Another source of embarrassment for a pre-teen to teen – everywhere we went, someone seemed to know her and would always have to stop to chat about fabrics and patterns and everything else that held no interest for me! As I got older, I appreciated more what went into her craft and how amazing and talented she truly was. She won more awards for her quilts than I can count and was a contributing author for several quilt books and magazines. She started her own business designing and marketing original quilt patterns, and when I got interested in folk art, she took me under her wing. We’d do shows together, with her selling her patterns, and me selling my folk art. She even inspired me to create and market my own line of folk art patterns!
It was always a running joke in our family that my mom couldn’t ever use all the fabric she owned in any one (or ten!) lifetimes. One wall in an extremely large room was nothing but shelves of fabric. If any of us needed anything, we knew we could find it there. As I got older, and got married, and had my own kids, I never truly appreciated how amazing it was to get a hand quilted baby quilt (and diaper bag, and changing pad and anything else you can think of!). All four of her children, and all twelve of her grandchildren had hand stitched quilts with their names on it. We joked that there were at least 10 quilts for each!!
Some of my mom’s crowing achievements included making the CBC Quilt in the late 1990’s, working with over 180 quilters to create and hand quilt a 10’ x 15’ wall hanging that is currently at the CBC Atrium. She also organized the making of a historical quilt for the Town of Aurora which was presented to the town mayor to hang in perpetuity in the Aurora Town Offices. She would say her biggest achievement was creating enough quilts that all her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren for generations will have one of her quilts.
Now, my mom is in her 90’s in a senior’s residence and isn’t quilting anymore. But her walls are adorned with her favourite wall hangings. When she moved out of her home, her children gathered and went through all the quilts and split them between us. And now that her memory isn’t as it used to be, I wish I had paid more attention to the stories she told regarding each quilt. She never made one that didn’t have meaning to her. Luckily, most of her quilts have a little block sewn on the back that has the name of the quilt, when it was made and a brief description of the story behind it. My favourite wall hanging is in the first picture in this editorial – to me it shows my mom at her sewing machine with some of her favourite blocks surrounding her. That one is proudly hung in my home now.
I now have a closet full of quilts (properly stored, rolled around tubes, never folded) with no where near enough beds to put them on, and quilted wall hangings are everywhere in my home. And I know that my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will all have more than enough quilts to last a lifetime. I’ve gone from an embarrassed daughter to a proud daughter. I am the daughter of a quilter.